Second Front (Kirov Series Book 24)

by John Schettler

  “You mean if we don’t get them back here safely…”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. The whole damn loop will spin out again, and each time it does, the changes become more and more catastrophic. Try getting a future like this one sorted out under those circumstances. Don’t you see? Normally it takes… time for the variations to ripple forward to the future. But soon the changes will become so pronounced that they will reach this time, even before events have concluded in the past. That’s Mother Time’s problem now, and it’s also our problem. We started it, and so we’ll simply have to finish it.”

  “But wait a moment… Didn’t you say this was, well, a different world, a different meridian of time here. Is Kirov’s intervention in your history here? Could I read about it in a history book in your library?”

  “Very astute,” said Kamenski. “The answer to your last question is no—there is no mention of any of those events in the history of this time line. But that hardly matters. You see, this isn’t the Prime Meridian. It’s just one of many possible alternative Meridians that could arise from events happening in the Prime Meridian. That’s where Kirov is now, but the Prime is badly warped, bent out of shape, contaminated by all those missiles, and yes, nuclear bombs as well. It will change things, Mister Gromyko, and rather dramatically. It will change the fate of each and every possible meridian arising from those events—including this one. Understand? Kirov sits on the trunk of the tree, this is just one of the branches. But if you cut through that trunk, they all go down together, don’t they. That’s what Kirov is doing—cutting through the Prime Meridian like a buzz saw. So we have to go back, get them out, and that failing….”

  He gave Gromyko those sad empty eyes again.

  “We have to kill them,” said the Captain, understanding the darker side of the mission Kamenski was handing him now. “Kill Kirov, the ship—there won’t be any magic tricks with a control rod this time. That’s the only way we can really be certain this loop you speak of could not repeat—kill the ship and crew. That’s why you want to load all those nice new missiles onto my boat.”

  “Captain, as I said, you are a very astute man.”

  Chapter 36

  Gromyko had a glum look on his face. He was to be a hired assassin, and worse than that, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. “Do you know I fought right alongside Kirov with Volsky in the Med?”

  “Volsky? He’s our one hope. Yes, the Admiral is a very reasonable man; Fedorov as well. They can make a good deal of difference, and so your first option would be to make a delivery.”

  “What kind of delivery?”

  “As I said, those control rods come in batches, and guess what, we still have a perfectly sound Rod-25 here. In this world, there never was a ship christened Kirov in 2020. We still have the four brothers, Ushakov, Lazarev, Nakhimov, and Pyotr Velikiy, though it looks like only two can walk these days. In this time line, the original Kirov had a reactor accident in 1990. Now it’s just a rusty pile of radioactive metal. Understand? So in this time line, Kirov never goes back. The ship in the past came from another meridian, one with no direct line of causality to this one, which is why we still remain a bit shielded from the consequences I spoke of earlier. In time, however, that will change. This meridian has become entangled.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just think of it as two or three threads of time getting all knotted up in a loom. If you don’t correct it, you get a real mess, and sooner or later, out come the scissors. The ship caused all this, and it’s tearing the history apart, knotting it all up, and time is trying to correct that and stitch it back together—into a new Prime Meridian. And I am one of her darning needles, Mister Gromyko. I don’t know why she does me the honor, but that seems to be the case. In this old head, I remember all the events of the other meridians entangled with that fate line, the line where Kirov first went back, and so I have what you might call perspective. I’m one of the blind men that was suddenly given the gift of sight, and now I can see the whole elephant, not just his leg or ear or tusk. So Mother Time is using me to try and sort out this mess so she can stitch these errant threads back into one tapestry again—one nice new Prime Meridian. Then that time line will replace all the others… All the others Mister Gromyko, including this one.”

  “But…. I came from the same world Kirov came from. Why would my submarine appear here, in this world? Why would I be mixed up in your business?”

  “Because that’s the way Time wanted it. She plays a nice little shell game, does she not? One minute you are here, the next minute you are somewhere else. You see, on this meridian, it wasn’t Kirov that vanished weeks ago in the Norwegian sea, it was your boat, Kazan.”

  “Vanished? What happened to it?”

  “We don’t know—then again, if I’m to believe your story, you’ve been back in the 1940s. That torpedo you fired gave Mother Time the opportunity to work a little sleight of hand. She brought you here, and for a very good reason, because I am here, a nice little know-it-all to help get you back where you are needed.”

  “Me? Kazan? Then I have to fix this mess?”

  “Something like that. You may get some help, and from most unexpected places, but yes, you have a very important part to play now.”

  “But I’m not the man you want. Don’t you need the man and sub that went missing in this time line?”

  “A good point, but apparently this is the way she wants to play it now—Mother Time has her reasons.”

  “But why? Why me and not the other?”

  “That’s a secret She still keeps. It may be that you and your boat are that very same submarine and crew, only you simply don’t have the memory of those events poured into your heads as yet. If you start getting hunches, strange snippets of recollection, odd dreams and things, then that will be a very strong clue. Now then… Ours is not to reason why, Captain. Ours is but to do or die.”

  “How am I supposed to get back where Time needs me?”

  “With Rod-25, of course. I’ve a nice new version just waiting to be tried out.”

  “What if it doesn’t work?”

  “What if we both come down with Ebola tomorrow? You ask a lot of questions, Mister Gromyko. Time will tell. We’ll simply put the rod in, run the procedure, and see what happens.”

  “But you say there are other threads of time entangled with this one—all knotted up. How can you be sure I’ll get where I’m supposed to go? What if I end up in some other thread—the wrong thread?”

  “That’s not up to me, but something tells me that you will get where your needed. Time will see to that. Ours is simply to understand the imperative before us and offer time your able services—and your remarkable submarine as well.”

  Gromyko nodded, his eyes dark, a simmering understanding there now. “Scissors,” he said. “Kirov has to be cut out of this tapestry, and I’m to be the scissors.”

  “Quite possibly. I know it’s a very difficult thing to ask of you, but considering the consequences if we do nothing….”

  “I understand…. Then I’m to go kill Kirov?”

  “Assuming you can’t get the ship back safely, that will have to be the case. But first, you might simply try persuading them to shift home again.”

  “Persuading them? Well I could probably convince Volsky or Fedorov of that, but Karpov is another matter.”

  “Yes, he’s a real problem. In fact, he’s been at the root of this entire mess. Let me see… the last I knew, he was in Siberia flying about in airships. Volsky and Fedorov still had the ship, but Karpov will want it back again. That will be very dangerous if it happens, because you are correct, he will not be easily persuaded to attempt to return to the future. But let’s hope for the best. Get back there, wherever Rod-25 sends you, then try to make contact with Volsky or Fedorov. I wish I could tell you more, but you see, in spite of my earlier assertion, I don’t know everything, only those events where I survived in the entangled meridians. Every man’s fate line ends somew
here. In the time line where you are most needed, I… disappeared, and well before the moment of Paradox, before the second coming of that ship. In fact, I believe the entire ship disappeared as well, though I’m speculating on that score. The problem is, I don’t really know what’s been going on there, nor do you. So you’ll have to get back there, get up to speed on events, and then find Volsky and Fedorov. Start with them, and with Dobrynin.”

  “Dobrynin?”

  “Yes, the Chief Engineer on Kirov. He’s quite a talent where the use of that control rod is concerned. Remember Fedorov’s plan? Remember that attempt we made to try and lurk beneath Kirov and use the control rod to pull both ships out?”

  “Yes—but it didn’t work. That’s what caused the situation we’re facing now. We got separated. They shifted forward, but only to 1940. I went further, all the way home at first. Yes, I saw what’s in store for this world, the end of the war that you’re worried about out there. Vladivostok was a black hole—gone. Volsky had warned me about that possibility, and told me I might be the one chance to prevent it. We could see no point in trying to live out our lives there, not in the future we saw. So we tried again, and this time we shifted backwards again, to January 11, 1941 to be exact. We were to send a coded signal to see if Kirov was there, and they were, only we later learned they arrived much earlier, in June of 1940.”

  “Yes, I know that part well enough. It’s all up here.” Kamenski pointed to his head. “So you were both exposed,” he said.

  “We arranged to meet the ship off Cape Town. That was when we learned everything was wrong, Russia was divided, the history all a mess.”

  “Volkov,” said Kamenski. “I’m afraid I’m to blame for that. I was the one who ordered him to look for Fedorov on the Trans-Siberian rail line. In truth, I was just trying to get rid of the rascal, but way leads on to way. I should always remember that. He caused a great deal of mischief when he got to Ilanskiy. It’s a long story. But I think I need to hear the rest of your tale. I’m well aware of what happened after you made your rendezvous with Kirov—the fighting in the Med, your little mission to try and close the Dardanelles, the move through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Atlantic, and that business with the German Navy. Then what?”

  “Then I got quite a shock. We detected an odd sound.”

  “A sound?”

  “Yes, Chernov had it on his sonar. He’s very good, but this one really had him stumped.” He remembered it now, thinking back to that moment when Chernov first made the report.

  “Sir, I picked up an odd signal on the ultralow sonic bands. We get message traffic down there, but this could not be anything coming from our world.”

  “No,” said Gromyko. “I don’t suppose it could. Then what is it?”

  “I’m not exactly certain yet, Captain. But it has structure. It’s an organized signal—a kind of pulsing wave. It isn’t random, and it isn’t geothermal or of seismic origin. I was just running recordings through some filters to double check that.”

  “Let me hear it.”

  “Sir? Oh, that won’t work. The signal is below the threshold of our hearing. You might sense it, on one level, but not with your ears—unless they are very good.”

  “Very well, Chernov. Carry on, but don’t forget that the Germans might have U-boats out here too.”

  “Don’t worry about that, sir. I’ll hear anything that comes within 50 nautical miles of us—even a diesel boat.”

  And then he did hear something, only it wasn’t a German U-boat, but another submarine, a British sub this time, but it certainly wasn’t from the 1940s…

  “Con…. Undersea contact. Possible submarine…”

  “German U-boat?”

  “Sir… This sounds like a British sub.”

  “British? We were not informed they had anything out here.”

  “Sir! This is crazy. It’s reading as Astute Class! We got lucky and recorded one boat after learning its deployment date. It’s the only profile we’ve ever managed to get, but my readings are above a 90% match for this signal.”

  “Impossible.”

  Gromyko could still hear himself saying that word. Yes, everything he had been about since Volsky first tapped him for an unscheduled mission had been that way—impossible, and now here he was facing that same impossibility yet again. Then a deeper instinct had asserted itself, reptilian, a reflex born of many hours beneath the sea. “All stop!” he had shouted. “Launch noisemaker sled number one. Then right rudder fifteen, down bubble fifteen! Rig for emergency silent running!”

  “Astute class?” said Kamenski. “Let me see… Astute was the first, of course, then came Ambush, Artful, Audacious, Anson, and Agamemnon. Those boats are all in service here today. They rushed to get Agamemnon ready early, given the political situation we’re facing now. Boat seven won’t join the fleet for at least another year, the Ajax.”

  “Well it must have been one of those first six then. How it got to the 1940s eludes me, but perhaps you could explain it.”

  “That isn’t something I witnessed, but if it came from our time, as it had to, then it might have been displaced as a result of the war. The way things are going here, all it will take is a mistake or two so set off a nuke, And when one goes off, the others are sure to follow.”

  “I’m afraid I may have made that same mistake,” said Gromyko. “It was pure instinct, pure reflex. One minute I’m stalking the German Navy, the next I’m under attack by a modern day Spearfish torpedo! You don’t sit down with tea to think something like that over. You just react, which is what I did. Given the situation we were facing, I reached for a hammer.”

  “I see,” said Kamenski. “A nuclear hammer, I suppose, and here you are. Very interesting. Well Mister Gromyko, we’re going to use another tool in the tool box this time, Rod-25, all new, never used, and at the height of its powers. You’re going back. The last time you used it the poor thing had been through many shifts. It was old, just like I am, and not quite up to the job. Let’s hope we cannot say the same for me now, and that this decision to send you back is a correct one. But a great deal goes with you. Understand?”

  “I suppose so,” said Gromyko.

  “As soon as I complete the missile bay refit, your boat will be ready. I’ll put my own people on it—very reliable. The new VLS Modules will install seamlessly in your existing bays. You’re getting the Zircons, hypersonic cruise missiles, over five times the speed of sound. Use them if you must, but Captain….” Kamenski paused now, thinking, and then looking like he was trying to remember something. His eyes had a distant look, as though he were seeing something that had not yet come to pass, a vision, a warning, a whisper in his soul that led him to make one further admonition to Gromyko.

  “This submarine,” he began. “This Astute Class submarine you say you encountered. Should you run across it again, I would do everything possible to let it be.” He wasn’t sure why he said that, but he could feel it, sense it as necessary, as imperative, though he did not know why.

  “Leave it be?”

  “Yes, no more nuclear torpedoes please. In fact, do everything in your power to avoid such an encounter. It may never happen, but if it does, use all your considerable skills to steer clear of that submarine.”

  * * *

  Sometime later, Gromyko was back on Kazan, and breaking the sad news to his crew that their trial was not yet over. “Yes, I know this will hurt. We’ve been longing for home, for our families, our loved ones, but so have our brothers aboard Kirov, yes? They’ve been out there a hell of a lot longer than we have. We tried to get them home again, but we failed the first time. We sailed with them, fought with them, and now we will not abandon them in their hour of need. We have new orders, and that is why we signed on, so we will carry them out. And then, perhaps one day, we will come home again, only to a world that we might yet be able to live in, and not the one we saw the first time we tried. Yes, we thought this might be that world, but not yet… not yet…”

  He le
t that settle in, let the men take it all to heart, a good crew, a fighting crew, and there was a war waiting for them, one way or another. He did not have the heart at that time to tell them everything, that they may have to make that war with the very ship and crew they were now going back to find and rescue from the cold grip of time. That would come later…

  “Chernov,” he said when the boat was finally rearmed and getting ready to get underway. “Did you ever refine your contact data on the British boat we tangled with?”

  “You mean the Astute Class boat? Yes sir, I’ve worked on that a good deal, and I found some other data we had on file from a trawler we had listening one day. I can’t be sure sir, but the Intel that I’ve been able to gather would lead me to make a pretty good guess as to which boat it was.”

  “Well?” Gromyko liked answers, not questions.

  “The Ambush, sir. The second boat in the class. I’ll put my money on number two.”

  “Ambush,” said Gromyko. “Good name for that one.” He smiled, and Chernov knew what he meant.

  So here we go again, he thought. We’re a nice angry wolf, and with sharp new teeth… a wolf in sheep’s clothing.